We were driving home from our first nursery outing of the season when I was reviewing my garden plan in my head. I turned to Dave and said "I KNEW I should have gotten those coleus!"

Tell us- what is your favorite way of growing them-
Do you grow them from seed every year, or order cuttings?
Do you start over from seed every year, or overwinter them, or take cuttings for the next year?

We all have our preferences, Trish. I take cuttings from mine in fall, start new plants to over winter inside under lights. In spring I take cuttings from those... and I add a few new ones each year.

Re: seeds: Coleus are slow growing from seeds, but easy to do. I've not found them to be very tolerant of sun, even here in Ohio. The Versa series are supposed to be sun tolerant but for me they fried in sun. Beautiful in shade, though.

The vegetatively propagated ones a far better for me. They're very slow to bloom or set seed. Many are sun tolerant. Rosy Dawn has wonderful plants and a great website, a good source for information on which are sun tolerant.
http://www.rosydawngardens.com...

Note, Vegetative ones are solely propagated from cuttings- i.e. it doesn't mean cuttings from seed grown plants, they are different strains altogether.

Karen

I used to take cuttings and overwinter every year, but I got too carried away. By spring I had hundreds of them! Now I usually just pick up packs of small plants at local stores. Unless there is something special I want, then I'll order on line. Our local stores don't have any named varieties. My favorite on line store is Rosy Dawn. http://www.rosydawngardens.com... Expensive, but if I get them early enough I can take cuttings from them and have several plants of each ready before it's time to plant outside.

We cross posted Karen - great minds think alike!

Thanks, gals!

I'll finally get a small patch for hostas this year, but the main shade garden(s) will have to wait at least one more year, if not too. We always have wayyyy more plans than time, it seems. We just don't have much shade at all, but I'm moving a walkway further away from the north side of the house to squeeze some room there to give me a start.

Karen, if they fry in the sun for you, I'll not even try! Maybe it's a good thing I didn't get any yesterday! (I'm pretty sure no container is going to make it for me this year).

I'll drool over all of yours!

Trish, the cutting grown ones did fine in full, all day sun, just not the seed grown ones. These were cutting grown ones, sun tolerant ones, in full sun all day.



Karen

Ahhhh!- Gotcha! Perhaps one or two will jump in my cart the next time after all.

That's some interesting information, Karen. Explains why I have the problems I do with my seed grown ones. How do you know which is which, if you're wandering around a garden center and spot little pots of Coleus? How can you tell if they're grown from seed or vegetatively propagated?

Trish I think our climate in Arizona is similiar to what you suffer thru in the summer. I find the Coleus do well under the filtered shade from trees when in pots.

Woofie, just order from Rosy Dawn, then you'll know. Or, any nurseryman at a good reputable nursery should be able to tell you which is which. Some garden centers only have seed varieties.

One clue, the seed grown ones tend to be named by the series. There are lots of different series
http://www.swallowtailgardense...
Notice, each series consists of lots of different colors and names, but the main name is for the series - e.g. rainbow, wizard, versa, kong, etc But each series is made of lots of individual types.

With the vegetative ones, each individual one has it's own name. (off-the-wall names maybe, but...)
http://www.rosydawngardens.com...

Once you get into coleus, you can usually tell by their names.

Karen

Well, that is really good stuff to know. I've hesitated to spend the money for some of the more expensive Coleus because the seed grown ones I have just don't seem to do that well for me. I've been drooling over one called "Rattlesnake" for two or three years now.